“She was really in awe of the idea that with hard work you could become anything,” the child’s mother, Karlyn Johnson Brown, told Makers.“I loved it because by choosing to portray her hero as a college student, the focus was on Michelle’s accomplishments as an individual, not just as an attachment.”

“We try to surround Ella-Lorraine with women who are go-getters like Michelle, women who are independent and smart, level-headed and loving,” says her father, Eugene Brown. Plus, he says, “We make sure she knows about those who have gone before and have passed on.”

In the past, Ella-Lorraine has dressed up as pioneer pilot Bessie Coleman as well as Ruby Bridges, who was the first African-American child to desegregate an elementary school in the South. She was even named after jazz icon Ella Fitzgerald.

“Ella-Lorraine has been taught from an early age about the women for whom she’s named and how they used their voices,” her mother says. “She knows that folks came before her that allowed her to be where and who she is today, and we’ve encouraged her to not back away from embracing that history.”